(7) Albertus Magnus constructed an earthen head in the thirteenth century, which both spoke and moved. Thomas Aquinas broke it, whereupon the mechanist exclaimed, There goes the labour of thirty years!

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(8) Alexander made a statue of Esculapios which spoke, but Lucian says the sounds were uttered by a man concealed, and conveyed by tubes to the statue.

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(9) The ear of Dionysius communicated to Dionysius, Tyrant of Syracuse, whatever was uttered by suspected subjects shut up in a state prison. This ear was a large black opening in a rock, about fifty feet high, and the sound was communicated by a series of channels not unlike those of the human ear.